Category: LIFE

Not all stress is bad. But, if left unmanaged and unchecked, stress can become quite unhealthy for us. We all know many causes of stress, but we don’t always slow down enough to think about the specifics that are causing stress in our own lives.

Money, health, family, friends, work, safety and security – are all prevalent triggers, and the sheer volume makes it difficult to intentionally focus on what’s causing us stress. One of the coping mechanisms that we can use is visualisation, a powerful technique that can help relieve the symptoms of stress and anxiety.

The technique involves using mental imagery to achieve a more relaxed mind. Similar to daydreaming, visualisation is accomplished through the use of your imagination. It is common practice for athletes to use imagery while they prepare for an event, practice a movement, or train while injured.

Swimmers mentally rehearse a perfect dolphin kick, and endurance runners imagine pulling extra miles from the depths of their mental and physical resources (Meijen, 2019; McCormick, Meijen, & Marcora, 2015). The mind offers a safe and flexible environment for practising a stressful task. Mentally rehearsing a daunting performance prepares the individual by asserting control over a (sometimes harmful) inner voice (Strycharczyk & Clough, 2015).

Focusing on positive mental images can favourably impact our mind and body and increase self-belief in our ability to cope with change. One study from 1995 took a group of sixty subjects and tested their levels of anxiety and depression before and after using visualisation techniques. After several sessions, all subjects showed vast improvement in stress reduction, lower anxiety, and decreased depression symptoms.

Visualisation can provide temporary relief from pain, tension, or problems. It requires creating images in your mind that are so captivating, so rich in detail, and so all-consuming that you get lost in the images your mind creates.

A recent article on betterhelp.com highlighted several types of visualisation that could help you explore this stress management technique a little further.

1. Creative visualisation of a favourable outcome
2. Visualisation as a diversion from stress
3. Visualisation with deep breathing
4. Guided imagery
5. Happy memory visualisation
6. Visualisation with the senses
7. Visualisation for self-motivation

If you’re a fan of apps for your mobile, here are some great ideas too:

1. Balance
2. Breathe+
3. Calm
4. Headspace
5. Waking Up

Coaches, therapists, psychologists and even early-childhood practitioners use visualisation to help calm overwhelming emotions and create a safe and happy healing space. This makes it a helpful tool to be used as a form of mindfulness and to manage stress.

There are many reasons for our increased stress levels – the use of technology and how it has changed our communication with each other and the world around us is complex and deeply integrated with our wellbeing. But where we used to follow seasons and the flow of the natural world around us, we have now created new rhythms and patterns and this has disrupted our Circadian Rhythm.

The term Circadian Rhythm refers to our body’s biological clock. This clock is observed across bird, reptile, and mammal species and is key for directing daily and seasonal behaviour patterns such as hibernation, eating and breeding. The light/dark cycle of the sun has a powerful effect on the circadian clock, sleep, and alertness. Our circadian clock responds to light, as a signal to be awake, and dark, as a signal to fall asleep. Increased light equals increased alertness, which equals increased stress.

Incandescent light bulbs were introduced in the late 19th century and since then our world has become awash in bright lights. Not only have artificial lights become a staple of our evening and early morning activities – we stare into backlit screens for several hours during the day too. From lamps that light up every street and city skyline all the way to constant mobile device use.

Our Circadian Rhythm is responsible for biological processes like brain wave patterns, hormone production and cell regulation. Studies show that the circadian cycle controls 10-15% of our genes.

Exposure to artificial light disrupts our internal clock regulation and has been linked to:

– Depression

– Insomnia

– Cardiovascular disease

– Cancer

– Immunity/Stress Response

All these conditions are quite clearly linked to our overall wellbeing. Your pineal gland releases the highest levels of melatonin when there’s darkness and decreases melatonin production when you’re exposed to light.

Melatonin triggers a host of biological activities, possibly including a nocturnal reduction in the body’s production of oestrogen. Sleep pattern disruption is thought to interfere with cancer suppression genes, leading to an increased risk of breast, prostate, gastric, and lung cancers.

Whilst things like financial stress, relationship tension, loss of a loved one and dealing with a global pandemic are all obvious causes of stress, a simple imbalance of our waking and sleeping lives can be equally harmful to our wellbeing. If you want to improve your quality of life, it’s not just about earning more money, or eating healthily, it’s about finding the right integration and balance of everything in your life.

“We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.” – Sheryl Sandberg

The foundation of most of our ongoing frustrations can be traced back to our habits, and the challenge with habits is we often aren’t even aware of them. When the world went into COVID lockdown, there was an increased awareness of face-touching, hand-washing and social distancing.

All of a sudden, we became aware that we could be touching our faces as much as three times every minute. We became aware of how close we would stand to people and how long we would wash our hands. This awareness, and knowledge of the implications, caused us to interrupt our regular routines and habits and change our behaviour.

Imagine how powerfully we could impact other areas in our lives where we feel stuck and frustrated with limited thinking and unhealthy habits!

When we constantly feel guilty for the money we have or regularly feel the stress of not having enough, we can start to recognise the habits accompanying those feelings. We might habitually be grumpy with loved ones because of finances or spend everything we have the minute it arrives in our account.

Recognising these patterns is the first step to connecting the habit to a desired or undesirable outcome – and we can interrupt that pattern. Even if we simply pause and take a mental note of what we’re doing, we’re already starting to alter our behaviour. Think about the first weeks of the global pandemic; there was so much happening that we would often forget our masks at home and would have to figure out how to work around it. Some of us kept spares in the car, our handbags and desk drawers.

We didn’t change overnight, but our habits and thinking patterns were interrupted enough to slowly spark the change.

If you’re sitting with some blindspots and can’t see the roots of some of your habits, perhaps we could connect and chat through your frustrations. We can’t see our own blindspots, and when we’re unaware of them, we cannot change them. Having a financial adviser or coach work with you can help you recognise, interrupt and change the habits that keep you in an unhealthy space.

Everything we know, believe, and feel is based on our internal thoughts. Positive thinking gives us extraordinary power over our thinking and ourselves (Strycharczyk & Clough, 2015).

Some people are exceptional; they always seem to remain positive regardless of what lemons are tossed their way. You know the type, the every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining, glass-half-full, things-will-get-better type of people. We love to have them around when we need their support, but we can also envy their seemingly relentless positive energy.

But – if our positivity is superficial and never permeates deep into our psyche, it can become unhealthy for us. It’s essential to make space in our lives for all the emotions we need to feel to avoid suppressing emotions and potentially becoming ill (dis-eased). This kind of surface happiness can be a little too nonchalant and detach us from what’s really going on in our lives.

It’s less about having positive feelings and more about choosing a positive attitude to whatever we feel. We cannot control our emotions; we can decide how to behave with those emotions – this is when we start to tap into that extraordinary power. Smiling is a proven way to physically start changing our attitude to uncomfortable emotions.

Smiling offers a mood boost and helps our bodies release cortisol and endorphins that provide numerous health benefits, including reduced blood pressure, stress and pain, and increased endurance and a strengthened immune system.

There is also growing evidence that the use of positive self-talk (following on from our smile and going a little deeper) can significantly improve how we tackle a challenge or approach a situation. Talk to yourself as though a friend, coach, or supportive colleague is offering you positive advice. This means that we don’t push out the emotions that we’d rather avoid, but instead, we approach them with a healthier attitude.

We must avoid feeling bad for feeling unfocused, bored, tired, overwhelmed, inadequate, excluded, exposed, anxious (and tons of other feelings!). Instead, we can internally acknowledge them and say to ourselves: “I know you’re feeling overwhelmed and tired, but you can do this. Rest if you need to, and start again a little later.” This creates space for discomfort whilst holding a healthy, positive attitude.

At the end of each day, we can reflect on our successes and achievements rather than dwelling on disappointments or perceived failures. Whether it’s in how we spoke with our family, landed a project at work, or even managed to achieve a finance, fitness or food goal – this practice helps us find the healthy positive.

It’s hard not to become fixated on getting things perfect. It may not be in all areas of our lives, but for almost all of us, we have skills, relationships and responsibilities where we want to show up as perfect. As Dave and Hester Vaughan (yourjourneyforlife.com) often say, “Messy, not perfect!”

This is a great reminder that we mustn’t fall into the perfectionism trap. If we do, we will find piles and piles of frustration. As the Economist wrote in a recent article (by Josh Cohen), society bombards us with instructions to be happier, fitter and richer. Why have we become so dissatisfied with being ordinary?

As a result, we’ve become fixated with ‘never enough’. We never seem to have enough money, time or material possessions, and we feel like we can’t start big projects because we’re not ready.

From Emerson’s provocative defence of “self-reliance” in 1841 to the rise of the self-help industry in the 1930s and the emergence of our own selfie culture, selfhood was regarded as our highest value and the object of our striving. Educational, aesthetic and financial betterment and the need for validation from others are the elements that form the perfectionist air we all now breathe.

Cohen writes that perfectionism “makes for a thin life, lived for what it isn’t rather than what it is”.

The imperative toward perfection remains as potent and pervasive as ever. In an article in 2017, two British psychologists, Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill, ascribed an exponential rise in perfectionism among the younger generation to the “increasingly demanding social and economic parameters” within which they struggled to make their lives. They also blamed “increasingly anxious and controlling parental practices”.

Social media creates additional pressure to construct a perfect public image, exacerbating our feelings of inadequacy.

This impacts how we make and communicate financial decisions. If we don’t look to understand the emotions and meaning behind our money, we will never be able to uncover the truth of messy, not perfect. Instead of embracing our true values and passions (called “ordinary” by the world), we perpetuate a culture where we are likely to grow dissatisfied with what we have and who we are. 

Managing our money and integrating it with a happy life requires us to recognise and accept that a happy life is messy, not perfect. Remember, the kid with the muddy clothes is the one who had the most fun.

[Find the original Economist article here.]

Every day we make decisions to live a life of our choosing. But yet, when asked about what our ideal life could look like, it’s often quite different from the one we’re living right now. Our decisions link our current life to the life we’d like.

With every decision, we’re either establishing a new boundary, moving a boundary or removing a boundary. Unfortunately, if we spend too much time removing boundaries, we will become increasingly frustrated, resentful, irritable and unhappy with our life.

This is where so much of our dissatisfaction sits: not having healthy boundaries.

When we’ve experienced a physical injury or disease, our doctors will most likely recommend some sort of routine to help us get back on track. Whether this is a routine for medication, exercise, rest, physiotherapy, eating or something else, it’s a way for them to remind us that boundaries are essential to regaining balance and healthy equilibrium.

Without boundaries and firm decisions that are intentional and connected to the life that we want to live, it’s hard to keep all of our good and healthy stuff in, so we will keep letting it slip away. It’s also easier to be distracted by things that aren’t adding value to our lives. We will constantly feel dissatisfied, no matter how hard we try.

Decisions are like lines in the sand. They’re just lines around us, and they will only be helpful and healthy if they’re connected to each other in a way that helps us build and sustain the life we choose. With this in mind, life is really a journey of constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing boundaries by growing our awareness of the decisions we’re making, and why we’re making them.

When we can see the link between decisions and boundary setting, we can start to be intentional with moving from a frustrating life to a fulfilled life; we can move from feeling dissatisfied to feeling dedicated and committed to something in line with our passion and peace.

Stress can be an incredibly powerful motivator. Most of the time, we see it as a negative, but that’s because our days are generally overwhelmed with stress. And, our coping skills have evolved to help us survive in environments very different (Cosmides & Tooby, 2013). Our mind protects us from harm and further stress by telling us that “we can’t”.

Coping with everyday life is complex and learning to make healthier decisions is a lifelong journey; it’s not something we can learn in one blog, book, podcast or TED talk. Every day we need to learn how to show up in a way that changes our focus from what we can’t do, to what we can.

From how we relate to our family and feel about making luxury purchases to engaging with clients and customers and managing our money, stress always crops up. We can try to avoid it (nearly impossible) or view it as an opportunity to develop and exercise our character.

Psychological research in sports, business, and beyond has identified approaches, skills, and tools to help us cope, overcome, and flourish.

The ABCDE model, developed by Albert Ellis in the 1950s, provides a reflective framework that supports us in changing our emotions and behaviours by identifying irrational beliefs and swapping them with rational ones.

1. ADVERSITY – Acknowledge the activity or adversity that is triggering. For example, not getting the raise you were hoping for or losing a pitch with a new client.
2. BELIEFS – Recognise the irrational beliefs that come to mind when you face adversity. For example, you may believe you are worthless or not good enough and never get anything right.
3. CONSEQUENCES – Recognise the consequences of those irrational beliefs. For example, you may give up trying or decide to lower your standards and start accepting second-best.
4. DISPUTE – Dispute the irrational beliefs and replace them with rational beliefs. For example, you can remind yourself of all your happy clients and customers and the excellent work and acknowledgement you’ve achieved and received in the past.
5. EFFECT – Notice the effect of your new beliefs and the confidence you have to change your situation. For example, you could approach your boss or prospective clients and find out how to do better, or you can keep yourself open to better opportunities that lie around the corner. 

Ultimately, we can’t stop our emotions from running amok. Still, we can interrupt them and become more intentional about what we believe about ourselves and how we will choose to respond in stressful situations.

There are many other strategies, including having a coach or mentor to help you see your blind spots (and irrational beliefs). For many years, financial planners have begun to play a strong coaching and support role to their clients, and as such, together, we can work towards helping you push a little harder or take a healthy rest when you think that you can’t.

Over the last two decades, we’ve been introduced, seduced and held captive by the overwhelming presence of digital communication. From the days when we promised ourselves we would ‘never get emails on our Blackberry’ to an age where we can DM, post, comment, react, share, support, subscribe, pin, tweet, self-publish, sync, stream, webcast, update, upload and download practically anything and everything.

We’ve moved from a chosen behaviour to listen and learn to a conditioned behaviour of reacting, responding and replying; and, it’s spilling over into our real-world lives.

With so many things in life, if we want to do them well, we need to pace ourselves, listen and learn. Learning can happen in many ways, including taking action, but if we haven’t listened properly, our actions will almost always be inadequate or inappropriate.

Becoming exceptionally good at anything requires hours and hours of learning and growing, and it requires focus, diligence and dedication. But, the digital world urges us to move faster whilst thinking and feeling less. This is why we find ourselves stuck or trapped in debt or with a string of poor financial decisions in our past and a lack of confidence to make better decisions in the future.

It’s why we struggle to connect through deep conversations and crave a journey of self-awareness and change on our own terms, not someone else’s agenda. Perhaps, we need to be reminded that it’s okay to simply listen and learn.

We don’t have to respond and reply to everything people say and do. We can let them be who they feel they need to be so that we can focus on who we want to be, making decisions that best benefit us.

It’s okay to listen and learn.

As Stephen Covey put it, “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.”

Have you ever watched a superhero movie where they show the origin story of the hero? It’s often a journey of going from ordinary and wanting so much more, to being extra-ordinary and not being able to cope with all of the responsibility.

A sense of overwhelming obligation can both distract and dilute the hero from being truly powerful in exacting the change they would like to see. And, although we’re not superheroes we can sometimes relate to this on a profound level.

There’s a quote by Robert Jordan that goes like this: “He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.”

If you are feeling constantly overwhelmed, almost to the point of drowning, it could be because of the extent to which you’ve allowed other people’s expectations to rule your life. On the website, orgcoach.net, they have a blog that helps us understand and deal with The Superman Syndrome.

One of the helpful tips that they offer is this: Honour your priorities

We are creatures of habit, and old patterns are hard to change, even when they no longer serve us well. Health care professionals note that we are so addicted to our fast-paced lives that it often takes a life-threatening crisis such as a heart attack or cancer to slow us down enough to gain the work-life balance we desire.

If you struggle to live a life based on your priorities and values, here are some concrete action steps you can take, beginning TODAY!

Action Idea #1: Discover what you love to do.

• If you had a terminal illness, what would you want to do with the time you had left? Write down your response.
• What’s holding you back from doing this now? Do you choose to wait for a terminal illness to come along before you make time for what you love most?
• Get your calendar out now, and schedule a time to do some of the things you wrote down.

Action Idea #2: Articulate your values.

• Jot down the names of 10-20 people whom you admire. They don’t need to be living, and you may have never met them or known them personally.
• After you’ve completed your list, write down the qualities that you admire in each person you listed. For example, if you listed Mother Teresa, you might describe these qualities: compassion, generosity, and unconditional love. The qualities that you admire in others are YOUR values.
• How do you honour your values regularly? What’s getting in the way of you honouring them?
• Pick at least one value that you choose to honour in the coming week. How will you honour it? If you will honour it in the form of an activity, be specific about what the activity is and schedule time on your calendar to make it happen.

Action Idea #3: Identify your priorities and passions.

• Pretend that you are attending your 100th birthday party and your closest friends and relatives have gathered to honor you. What would you want them to say about you? What would represent a life well lived with no regrets?
• What matters most to you? What are you most passionate about? Write it down.
• What one thing could you do–that if you did it regularly–would make the biggest difference in your personal life? How about for your professional life?
• Get out your calendar and begin planning to do these things regularly.

If you’d like a fresh perspective (and someone to help you design the life you want by aligning your vision, priorities, and actions), then let’s schedule a discovery call today.

We all have reactionary instincts, which can be quite different in various situations. We won’t always run from certain challenges (flight) or panic when confronted with a problem (freeze). Sometimes we may stand our ground and represent our deep values (fight), but in other cases, we could simply go with the flow in order to keep the peace (appease).

In her article “Everything I Know About Fight or Flight, ” Aurora Eliam describes how these hormonal cascades work succinctly. As individuals, the emotions that accompany the confusion and helplessness we feel when we experience fear or trauma will vary.

That said, the response to the particular emotion tends to be similar:

• If you feel anger or frustration when afraid, your likely reaction will be to fight
• If you feel terror or alarm when afraid, you’ll probably respond by flight
• If you feel anxiety or desperation when afraid, you’ll likely freeze
• If you feel dismayed or foreboding, you’ll try to appease

Whilst these can be reactionary, if we can learn to take a breath before acting (or reacting), we can condition ourselves to respond better in volatile, uncomfortable or challenging situations. There are many ways to start to reflect on our triggers, whether healthy or unhealthy, and these four classic trauma/fear responses are helpful in enabling us to identify our motivations and how they direct us.

And the sooner we realise that all of these will impact our financial situation, the better.

How we behave and show up is crucial to getting and keeping a job. Our reactions impact how we save, spend and invest, and how we communicate about and around money with our family and friends. Every life decision we make impacts our money.

As we identify why we behave the way we do, and how we arrive at our choices, we can start to choose how we might change them. In a blog on medium.com, the author offers these four helpful tips:

• learning about and developing healthy personal boundaries (a major concern for appeasers)
• developing safer and healthier self-soothing techniques and strategies for self-care (a major concern for flighters)
• controlling mood and managing emotional responses (a major concern for fighters)
• improving self-esteem and learning grounding techniques to lower anxiety and dissociation (a major concern for freezers)

If you want to experience more freedom in your finances, it’s helpful to explore how you can experience more freedom in other areas of life where you may feel like you have lost control, and learn to become healthily unattached to experiences and situations that are outside of your control.